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A Hong Kong Newspaper on a Mission to Promote China’s Soft Power

March 31, 2018 by Leave a Comment

But journalists worry that Alibaba, which has become one of the most highly valued companies in the world in part by maintaining good ties with the Chinese government, is abandoning The Post’s history of scrappy reporting to please Beijing.

“By explicitly stating that its aim is to tell a positive story of China and running questionable stories, management undermines the very attributes that make the S.C.M.P. useful in the first place,” said Yuen Chan, a journalist and senior lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

As businesses and governments around the world look for ways to skirt the traditional news media, The Post has become a test case for how a new owner can co-opt an established brand to promote certain viewpoints. Alibaba executives say they want to present a “fair and balanced” alternative to foreign media, a mission statement that echoes Fox News.

Gary Liu, a Harvard-educated technology entrepreneur who is the Post’s chief executive, said the newspaper could offer a more nuanced portrait of China than Western news outlets, with a staff of 350 journalists in Asia, including about 40 in the mainland.

“We are not here, certainly, to promote the views and wishes of Beijing,” said Mr. Liu, who was previously chief executive of Digg, a news aggregation site in New York.

“We are not here, certainly, to promote the views and wishes of Beijing,” said Gary Liu, the Post’s chief executive. Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

But a culture of self-censorship at the newspaper predates its purchase by Alibaba, said Wang Feng, who served as The Post’s online editor from 2012 to 2015. He said top editors routinely rewrote, played down or withheld critical stories for fear of offending influential Chinese officials or business executives.

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“It was often done in a very hush-hush manner,” said Mr. Wang, now the editor of the Chinese-language website of The Financial Times. “You could see that people were not exactly free to speak their minds.”

That timidity has persisted under Alibaba, according to more than a dozen Post journalists who, speaking on condition of anonymity, described how the paper shies away from investigative reporting on Communist Party leaders and contentious subjects such as human rights.

Last year, The Post retracted a business column that suggested an investor in Hong Kong had ties to a trusted adviser to President Xi Jinping and had used his connections to amass wealth. The editors said the column made “insinuations beyond the facts.”

Its author, Shirley Yam, a well-respected financial commentator, resigned. In a statement, Ms. Yam defended her column, saying that editors had vetted the piece extensively before its publication.

Some critics said the more notable change under Alibaba may be The Post’s ramped-up production of articles that present China in a friendly light.

Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba and one of China’s richest men, at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January. Laurent Gillieron/European Pressphoto Agency

In February, Post journalists said, the Ministry of Public Security pushed the paper’s top editors to send a reporter to interview Gui Minhai, a political critic and Swedish citizen whom the Chinese police had snatched from a train.

Mr. Gui was then quoted saying he had broken Chinese law and did not want help from the outside world. In its coverage, The Post said that the interview with Mr. Gui was “government-arranged.”

“The Post risks being a vehicle in Beijing’s overall propaganda machinery,” said Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a former Post journalist.

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Mr. Xi, China’s most powerful leader in decades, has all but eliminated critical reporting in the mainland, placed new pressure on Hong Kong media and ordered a vast expansion of China’s publicity machine, with state broadcasters merged into a single entity called the “Voice of China” to strengthen China’s international messaging.

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Chow Chung-yan, who oversees coverage of China and Hong Kong, denied The Post yields to pressure from Beijing.

“We are independent and free,” he said. “We don’t have people calling into our newsroom asking what we will publish.”

A monitor showing website traffic at the Post’s headquarters in Hong Kong. Traffic to its website has roughly tripled over the past year. Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

The Post’s editor in chief, Tammy Tam, a former Hong Kong television broadcaster, declined to be interviewed. “We believe in reporting freely, fearlessly and in accordance with the highest editorial standards,” she said in a statement.

The Post’s leaders say that Alibaba executives, who have offices a few floors above the newsroom, are not involved in editorial decisions. But Mr. Tsai, the co-founder who spoke at the celebration last month, maintains a close connection, offering occasional feedback on coverage and new products.

There has been at least one noticeable change since the sale: an outpouring of coverage of Alibaba and its leader, Jack Ma, one of China’s richest men. Articles mentioning Alibaba reached an average of about 3.5 per day last year online and in print, roughly double the number in 2016, according to an archival search.

Alibaba appears to be willing to lose money on The Post, which is not profitable, according to newsroom leaders. Mr. Tsai has said The Post, with a circulation of about 101,000 and more than 10 million monthly active users on its website, may not become a self-sustaining business for at least five more years.

Traffic to The Post’s website has roughly tripled over the past year, the company said. Alibaba made access free when it took over.

But Alibaba has abandoned ambitions of expanding the audience for the Post’s journalism in the mainland, where its website is blocked. Even with its pro-China mission, articles in The Post still touch on topics that are off limits to mainland readers, like the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

The Post’s new headquarters features an in-house pub that serves Post Hop, a custom-made beer. Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

While many of its approximately 850 articles a week appear tailored for a Hong Kong or Asian audience, The Post has gone on a hiring spree of journalists from outlets like the BBC and The New York Times to help bring an international tone to its coverage.

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To cater to young people and readers in the United States, now its largest market, the Post this month launched Inkstone, an app and newsletter that offers a conversational take on China, and Abacus, a multimedia site focused on technology. The new products also help blunt criticism that The Post is a propaganda tool.

“Diss the national anthem? That’s up to three years in the slammer,” read one recent headline on an Inkstone article about penalties for mocking the Chinese national anthem in Hong Kong.

The Post is catering to readers in the United States with new products, such as multimedia apps about China. Video by Inkstone News

The Post’s success may hinge on persuading overseas readers that it delivers reliable journalism about China. But on the front lines, reporters are grappling with perceptions that the paper is another Chinese state news media outlet.

Tom Grundy, editor of the Hong Kong Free Press, a rival news site, said The Post was home to talented reporters. But he said Alibaba’s ownership of the paper and recent editorial missteps risked tarnishing high-quality work.

“No matter how good their output,” he said, “there will always be distrust.”

Robert Delaney, a New York-based correspondent for The Post, said he had difficulty lining up interviews with American politicians and other sources because they assumed he worked for a news outlet controlled by the Communist Party.

Now Mr. Delaney, a former China correspondent for Bloomberg News, makes a point of clarifying.

“Within the first minute, I just want to let them know, ‘Just so you know, we’re not a mainland Chinese newspaper, even though we have China in our name,’” he said. “That gets kind of awkward.”

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/world/asia/south-china-morning-post-hong-kong-alibaba.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

Wealth Matters: Want to Keep Your Wine Collection Safe? Store It in a Bomb Shelter

March 31, 2018 by Leave a Comment

In the realm of high-end wine collecting, storage is crucial, however mundane that might sound. How people store their wine can ensure it maintains its value. Where they store it brings peace of mind, whether it is in a vault high above the ground or a bomb shelter below it.

A test bottle used to monitor temperature at Mana Wine Storage. Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

“We’re basically providing the optimal environment for the wine,” said Avner Schneur, president and chief executive of GRM Document Management, which owns Mana Wine Storage. “We’re providing the capability to monitor it.”

During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, he noted, personal cellars and several storage facilities were flooded. “Our warehouse is above the ground, so we don’t have the flood risk,” he said.

To people who keep only a few bottles of wine around the house, such focus on storage may seem strange. But collectors take it seriously for several reasons.

Space is an obvious need. Dr. Mark Connolly, a cardiovascular surgeon, has always lived in apartments in and around New York. He has focused his collection on Italian red wine.

But using a storage service has created its own problem: an overabundance of wine. Because Dr. Connolly, 63, never had to worry about managing his inventory, he just kept collecting.

He has 7,000 bottles, and he knows he will never finish them in his lifetime. “I always tell my kids, ‘You can’t sell it,’” Dr. Connolly said. “‘You have to drink it or give it to your friends.’”

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Tim Gallagher, 49, has a cellar in his home in New Canaan, Conn., that holds 2,200 bottles of wine. He keeps an additional 1,300 bottles in storage facilities to age before they’re ready to drink, he said.

Mr. Duarte loading cases for delivery. Mana charges a minimum fee of $40 to deliver wine to Manhattan, whether one bottle or five cases. Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

Like Dr. Connolly, Mr. Gallagher, who works in finance, uses storage facilities because he is buying more wine than he is drinking.

“I try to buy in quantities of three or six bottles,” he said. “I’m not seeking to acquire a lot more bottles. My goal is to have lots of variety.”

Storage facilities also provide records, or provenance, for people who might want to sell their collection one day. Just as art collectors want to know who has owned a work, wine collectors want to know that rare vintages have not been stored in a car trunk.

Wine can be damaged by excessive heat or cold if it is not stored properly.

“With a wine that is heat damaged, the fruit dries out, and it could be tart,” said Per Holmberg, former head of the wine department at Christie’s auction house and now director of the private client group at Wine Source. “When wine gets too cold, it starts to expand, and you only have a certain amount of space before gases get pushed out through the cork.”

A lack of provenance can affect a wine’s value, particularly when people are bidding for it at an auction, Mr. Holmberg said. Knowing where the wine has been will help increase the bidding, he said.

Shipping wine in the country is tightly controlled by a web of state laws, and it is illegal for individuals to ship wine themselves across state lines. Having wine storage in different states can ensure that collectors get the wine they want regardless of where they live.

That is one of the reasons Mr. Wallick has wine in New York and New Jersey. Mana also has licenses that allow it to ship a bottle to a friend in another state as a gift.

Mana markets the convenience of its operation. Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

Mr. Gallagher keeps his wine in four locations. Outside of his own cellar, he has wine at the Chelsea Wine Vault in Manhattan, some of which has been there for more than a decade. Other wine is in River Valley Wine Cellars in Westchester County, which is closer to his home. But recently, he has been storing wine at a facility in northern Connecticut called Horse Ridge Cellars.

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Most storage facilities maintain the right humidity and temperature for aging wine, but there is nothing special about them. Horse Ridge, though, has a hook the others cannot match: It stores wine in its nuclear bomb shelters.

One shelter was built by a group of Hartford insurance companies in the 1950s to store their documents and protect their top executives in the event of a nuclear attack.

“When I bought the property in 2000, there were a lot of leftover documents here, and I found all the minutes from board meetings,” said Jed Benedict, president of Horse Ridge Cellars. “They fully intended to have this massive, awesome bomb shelter to hide out in, and then the only thing left in the world would be insurance executives.”

Now the bomb shelter protects hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of some of the greatest wines ever produced. Six years ago, when it filled up, Mr. Benedict built another one.

The natural temperature of these shelters is perfect for wine. The humidity is easy to manage. And security is not difficult to explain: The original bomb shelter has a 12-ton vault door, is eight feet underground and has a series of backup generators that would, well, protect your wine from Armageddon.

But Horse Ridge is two hours from New York, and proximity matters for many collectors. So Mr. Benedict said he was generally in and around New York every week for pickups and deliveries.

Shipping wine is tightly controlled by state laws. Having wine storage in different states can ensure that collectors get the wine they want regardless of where they live. Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

Mr. Schneur of Mana markets the convenience of his operation and its climate-controlled vans.

“If you decide you want to get a bottle of wine and ship it from New Jersey to New York, it’s illegal for you, but we have the licensing,” he said. “We can pick it up for you. We can deliver it for you. We can do it in a rush if it’s for tonight’s dinner or tomorrow or next week.”

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Delivery fees vary. As with anything else, if you wait until the last minute, it will cost you more. Mana charges a minimum fee of $40 to deliver wine to Manhattan, whether one bottle or five cases, which Mr. Schneur said was reasonable.

“To cross the tunnel, it’s $15 for the toll,” he said. “We’re not nickeling and diming you.”

There are other charges, too. Horse Ridge charges $40 an hour for additional services, like taking an inventory of wine or packing up a collection for shipment.

Storage fees can be as low as $1.25 a month per case of wine, which holds 12 regular bottles or six magnums. Of course, wine collectors rarely store just one box, and they are not putting it there for just a month.

Mana has a monthly minimum of $45, which covers 20 cases of wine. That breaks down to 19 cents a bottle. For people who want their own “wine cage” — a space that holds 100 cases — the cost starts at $100 a month.

But for the serious collectors with hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in wine, these charges are of little matter. They know their wine will be secure for decades.

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/your-money/wine-collecting-storage.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Your Money

After Driving Streaming Music’s Rise, Spotify Aims to Cash In

March 31, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Spotify predicts that by the end of 2018, it will have up to 96 million subscribers and $6.5 billion in revenue, according to a recent filing.

But Spotify’s revolution has been about more than numbers. Streaming has also brought about a shift in the business itself, transforming its underlying financial model and rewriting the rules for how hits are made.

In a sense, it has even changed the conception of music as a product. With streaming, a song is not a discrete item to be paid for and kept — like a CD or a download — but one part of a vast pool of music that listeners can access with a click. By design, it’s not too different from what the millennial generation had grown accustomed to through pirate sites like Napster and Grokster.

“It all worked because we recognized the consumer behavior,” Mr. Ek said at an investor presentation last month. “Fans wanted all the world’s music for free, immediately. So what we did was build a better experience.”

Spotify’s dealings with major stars like Taylor Swift are still delicate. Chad Batka for The New York Times

Mr. Ek and Martin Lorentzon, a Swedish investor, founded Spotify in 2006. Their service was built in part to mimic the experience of piracy — for years it used a peer-to-peer network to help songs play instantly — while operating legally and paying royalties.

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“Music was too important to me to let piracy take down the industry,” Mr. Ek wrote in a letter included in Spotify’s investor prospectus. The company declined to comment for this article, citing a quiet period before the public listing.

At first, Spotify was conceived of as a free, advertising-supported service. But realizing that record companies and music publishers would be more willing to grant licenses if Spotify also had a paid level, Mr. Ek and his team developed the so-called freemium model. Users can listen to any song free with advertising, or pay $10 a month to remove the ads and get perks like offline listening.

The free service is meant to lure customers to pay; according to Spotify, 60 percent of new subscribers begin as free users.

Music executives involved in Spotify’s early licensing negotiations were impressed by the company’s technology, and by its approach: Unlike other music tech start-ups at the time, most of which no longer exist, Spotify presented itself as a partner that could help the industry recover.

Still, the idea of simply giving music away was worrisome. So as a condition of granting licenses, the major record labels and Merlin, an organization that represents independent labels, received equity stakes in Spotify that are now worth billions of dollars. They have all said they will share with artists any profits from the sale of those stakes, although exactly how that will work remains unclear.

Once Spotify took hold — it came to the United States in 2011, after protracted talks — record companies discovered that its subscriptions delivered steadily recurring income, a relief from the industry’s seasonal ups and downs.

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“Once you get someone in, you take away the unpredictable cycles we used to see,” said Ole Obermann, the chief digital officer at the Warner Music Group. “For most months of the year, we’d be behind and then count on a huge spike of sales around the holidays to make us profitable for the year.”

With the cost barrier to listening removed, consumer behavior began to change. Independent labels said their music was being listened to more. Playlists, programmed with a mixture of editorial supervision and machine learning, began to influence what people heard; according to Spotify, 31 percent of its listening now happens through its playlists.

Yet even Spotify’s biggest champions in the music industry, like Daniel Glass of the label Glassnote, notice that streaming and social media created a network effect that emphasized hit songs above everything else.

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“I remember sitting down with managers and artists and explaining that they will get paid; streaming is the future, whether you like it or not,” said Mr. Glass, whose label catalog includes Childish Gambino and Mumford Sons. “But you’ve got to have hits.”

Adele and other artists of her stature are able to sell millions of CDs by keeping their music off streaming services, at least for a while. Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Spotify says its mission is to “unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art.” But its dealings with artists are still delicate. An elite level of superstars like Taylor Swift and Adele have realized that they can still sell millions of CDs if they withhold their music from streaming, at least for a while. (Plenty of other stars, like Ed Sheeran and Drake, have embraced the format fully.)

And many who are not household names, from independent musicians to major songwriters, say the complex economics — each click is worth just a fraction of a penny, to be divided among Spotify, labels, publishers and, finally, artists and songwriters — make it impossible for anyone other than a pop star to make a living from streaming.

“The streaming model as it stands now is fundamentally stacked against middle-class artists and emerging artists,” said Blake Morgan, an independent musician and a label owner who has been an outspoken critic of Spotify and Pandora, another streaming service. “Ninety percent of the revenue is going to 1 percent of the artists.”

Tensions have also developed with the major record labels, which fear that as Spotify grows more powerful it will start to exert more influence over artists. One possibility, hinted at in Spotify’s prospectus, is that the company will want to work more closely with artists, in a way that might circumvent record labels, said Mark Mulligan, a digital media analyst with Midia Research.

“Spotify has to communicate that they are the labels’ No. 1 partner, there to help artists and labels find success,” he said. “But at the same time, they present themselves as part of a future which they imply doesn’t necessarily include record labels.”

But can Spotify itself make money? It has had $2.8 billion in net losses in just the last five years, and pays most of its revenue to music rights holders. The company’s freemium model means that it must subsidize the costs of the tens of millions of users who don’t pay.

“Becoming the world’s largest global music-streaming subscription service has been expensive,” Barry McCarthy, Spotify’s chief financial officer, said in the company’s recent investor presentation. (Mr. McCarthy is a former finance chief of Netflix, an association he mentioned several times.)

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Spotify has a clear path to profitability, Mr. McCarthy said, pointing out that while it has continued to lose money, its operating losses have decreased as a percentage of revenue, and its free cash flow has grown to become positive for the last two years.

Still, he said that for the foreseeable future, Spotify would continue to make investments to promote growth — at the expense of profits. Spotify’s stock price may depend on how long Wall Street will remain patient with that strategy.

Mr. Glass of the Glassnote label said he never had any doubts about the freemium model. Free samples, he said, are good for business, recalling working at his uncle’s luncheonette in Brooklyn as a teenager.

“All the good customers — even the new customers — he would give them free samples of the day’s specials,” Mr. Glass said. “ ‘We’re having brisket today.’ ‘Have some coleslaw.’”

“They came back and ordered more. Spent more money.”

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/business/media/spotify-streaming-music.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

India building city from scratch to challenge Singapore & Hong Kong financial hubs

March 31, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Called Gujarat International Finance-Tec City, or GIFT City, it is planned to be on a par with global financial hubs.

“Except for the fact that we are not sitting in Singapore and GIFT City is not Singapore, I think from a business perspective we have everything that is required,” the city’s CEO Ajay Pandey told CNN.

© Global Look PressIndia to become world’s third-largest economy by 2028

The new city has already attracted close to $2 billion in real estate investment, and Pandey expects the sum to eventually rise to nearly $11 billion.

It currently consists of a school, a data center, and three large office buildings, to which workers are bussed from surrounding areas. The first residences will be ready by May, and a four-tower World Trade Center complex is expected to be completed in the next two years. As for the transportation links, Ahmedabad Airport is only a 25-minute drive away.

Two stock exchanges were established in GIFT City in 2017, and government exemptions recently made trading virtually tax-free. The city will also have its own financial regulator as part of an effort to reduce red tape and bureaucracy for foreign investors.

Authorities claim that moving operations to GIFT City has helped some companies reduce costs by up to 80 percent.

“For a foreigner, landing in GIFT is more like landing in other financial centers,” said Dipesh Shah, who heads the city’s financial services operations. “It gives you all the competitive tax regimes which you are used to outside India.”

The country’s potential has long been attracting foreign investors. Its economy grew by 7.2 percent in the final three months of 2017 (which is faster than China) after recovering from the effects of a shock cash ban and a disruptive tax overhaul.

“Eventually, GIFT city should become a vehicle or a place for people from across India, like Hong Kong has acted for China in the last 30 or 40 years,” said Bombay Stock Exchange CEO Ashishkumar Chauhan.

When the Bombay Stock Exchange started operating 15 months ago, it hosted daily trading worth around $1 million. This week, that number exceeded $500 million for the first time.

“The moment you hit close to half a billion dollars, that’s the time that some of the big names of the world – JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and others – begin to step in,” said Pandey, adding: “Things are beginning to roll.”

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/422843-india-new-city-investors/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

China can succeed with petro-yuan where Gaddafi failed – killing the US dollar in oil trade

March 31, 2018 by Leave a Comment

“Ideas related to oil trade in currencies other than the dollar arose more than once. Some of them were severely suppressed by the United States, one example is Muammar Gaddafi, who proposed the introduction of a regional currency gold dinar and trading oil in the Middle East in this currency,” Aleksandr Egorov, foreign exchange strategist at TeleTrade, told RT.

Petro-yuan helps Russia China dump US dollar in oil trade

However, this time, an attempt to oust the dollar could be successful. China has launched oil futures backed by yuan, and Beijing has what Gaddafi didn’t, according to the expert.

“Along with the Chinese role in the global economy and the growing interest in the renminbi, China is also protected by a nuclear shield. It can afford to try to shatter the monopoly in oil trade. This will give even more weight to the Chinese yuan. In addition, China’s economy is the world’s largest consumer of oil, and consequently, all world producers of raw materials will have to reckon with the strategy of the Chinese authorities,” Egorov said.

According to the analyst, the timing for the launch of the petro-yuan is perfect. Key oil producers Russia, Iran and Venezuela are under pressure from US sanctions, and it is a good moment for them to ditch the dollar in oil trade and substitute it with the yuan.

Mikhail Mashchenko, an analyst at social network for investors eToro, agrees. “From the point of view of Russia’s geopolitics, it is certainly beneficial to reduce the role of the dollar in foreign trade. And it has been done, let’s recall the record growth of the country’s gold reserves. The other states that are constantly under the threat of new sanctions, like Iran and Venezuela, can profit, too. The contracts in RMB will allow to trade oil without US approval,” he told RT.

READ MORE: Why petro-yuan may become biggest game-changer of all time in capital markets

Both analysts agree that it will take time before the petro-yuan can become a real threat to the dollar. China needs to win the support of the world’s largest oil producers Russia and Saudi Arabia, or the initiative is doomed, says Mashchenko. He added that the yuan is fully controlled by Beijing, which could also spook potential investors.

For more stories on economy finance visit RT’s business section

Article source: https://www.rt.com/business/422838-petro-yuan-dollar-gaddafi/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

Filed Under: Global Business

‘Roseanne’ Is Here to Stay: ABC Renews Highly Rated Reboot

March 30, 2018 by Leave a Comment

The current “Roseanne” season, technically the show’s 10th, comprises nine episodes, seven of which have yet to air. The next season of “Roseanne,” which will be shown as part of ABC’s 2018-19 lineup, is currently planned at 13 episodes.

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“Roseanne,” the first run of which was part of the ABC schedule from 1988 to 1997, has thrust itself into the middle of the national conversation. Ms. Barr, in real life and on the show, is a vocal supporter of President Trump, who called to congratulate her on the ratings win and mentioned her success during a rally in Ohio on Thursday. Fox News pundits have praised the show for representing people who they say are not usually major characters on network television shows.

Although “Roseanne” has won generally favorable reviews from critics, some on the left have expressed feeling conflicted over supporting the show.

Its early success has been a big win for ABC. “Roseanne” is part of a broader strategy hatched by the network’s executives soon after Mr. Trump’s surprise victory in 2016. The TV industry will keep a close eye on the performance of “Roseanne” as it moves deeper into the season: Will there be a drop in viewership, or will all the recent media attention keep the ratings relatively high? (“Will Grace,” for example, lost 30 percent of its live audience between its first and second week — but the show helped make up the gap with delayed viewing.)

The outsize ratings success of the first episode could also help reverse a dry spell: ABC was stuck in last place among the four major broadcast networks for each of the last two seasons.

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/business/media/roseanne-abc-renews.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

Facebook Employees in an Uproar Over Executive’s Leaked Memo

March 30, 2018 by Leave a Comment

In some of his tweets, Mr. Mosseri also defended Facebook. When writers from Vox and BuzzFeed tweeted that they noticed that stories critical of Facebook were receiving surprisingly low levels of traffic on Facebook, Mr. Mosseri jumped in.

“We 100% do not take any action on stories for being critical of us,” he tweeted.

Mr. Bosworth, the author of the 2016 memo, also took to Twitter. Late Thursday, he said he did not agree with what he wrote in the memo “and I didn’t agree with it even when I wrote it.” He added that “the purpose of this post, like many others I have written internally, was to bring to the surface issues I felt deserved more discussion with the broader company.”

After BuzzFeed published the memo, Mr. Bosworth deleted it from an internal message board where it had originally been posted. In a statement to BuzzFeed, Mr. Zuckerberg praised Mr. Bosworth as “a talented leader who says many provocative things” and said that he and most people at Facebook did not agree with the memo and that the company had realized that it could not just be about connecting people.

Facebook employees said on Friday that discussions were raging across the company regarding the merits of the post. Some called for executives to aggressively pursue action against those leaking to the media, said two Facebook employees, as well as for the company to do more to screen for potential whistle-blowers during the hiring process.

At least one former Facebook employee, Alec Muffett, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Bosworth’s memo was responsible for his decision to leave the company.

“Between overwork and leadership direction evidenced thusly, I could never stay,” wrote Mr. Muffett, who formerly worked as a Facebook engineer.

“There are some amazing engineers working at Facebook, folks who care deeply about user privacy, security, and how people will use the code that they write,” Mr. Muffett said later in a message. “Alas this episode may not help” to achieve more transparent internal product discussion, he said.

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/technology/facebook-leaked-memo.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

Your Money: A Student Loan Fix for a Teacher, and Many Other Public Servants

March 30, 2018 by Leave a Comment

While both developments are overwhelmingly positive, very little about the public service loan forgiveness plan is straightforward. We’re still months away from knowing the details of how the $350 million fund will work. And if you think you’re repaying your debt correctly under the many terms of the program, there’s a decent chance you’re not.

The federal loan program allows people working full time for qualified employers (generally government workers and those who work for nonprofits) to apply for tax-free federal student loan forgiveness after 10 years of on-time payments. There are a couple of more catches, though: You have to be in the right kind of loan (a so-called direct loan from the government) and making the right kind of payment (generally an income-based or income-driven one of some sort). I explained this in more detail in a column last year (“Panicked Borrowers, and the Education Department’s Unsettling Silence”), which contains many links to more resources and instructions.

About a week after my column on Mr. Shafer appeared, he heard from an Education Department staff member who offered to review his file in more detail. After several exchanges, he received official notice this month that he now has 97 months of credit toward the 120 months he would need for forgiveness. That’s 84 more than he had previously.

Around the same time, the loan problem was being taken up by others in Washington. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, a proponent of loan forgiveness for public service workers going back to her days as a Harvard Law School professor, told me last week that she began asking around after reading about Mr. Shafer. The program had begun in 2007, so by last fall at least some people should have been close to having their debt wiped away.

Instead, she found that constituent teachers and firefighters were having a hard time navigating the rules and receiving proper credit for their payments. “It was about finding out that the problem was bigger than anyone thought, but also trying to figure out what to do,” she said in a phone interview. “It was a lot of head-banging.”

By mid-November, two other Democratic senators, Tim Kaine and Sheldon Whitehouse, had introduced a bill aimed at fixing the problem, one they had been working on before my column ran. A handful of legislators on the House side, including two Republicans, introduced their own legislation around the same time.

Two Democratic senators, Sheldon Whitehouse, left, and Tim Kaine, introduced a bill aimed at fixing problems with the forgiveness program in mid-November. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, via Getty Images

At the time, the prospects for any new law were uncertain, given that President Trump and other Republicans have been trying to get rid of public service loan forgiveness altogether for new borrowers. But then came a break: a series of compromises around budget and appropriations measures that led to the creation of the $350 million forgiveness fund.

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Here’s how it is supposed to work. First, you have to have made the full 120 payments before you can get in line for the money. Once you apply for forgiveness, if you discover that some of your payments did not in fact count, you may be able to get retroactive credit for them.

Who will get credit? You won’t get it if you have a Perkins loan or what’s known as a FFEL loan (the acronym stands for Federal Family and Education Loan), since people in those loans are not eligible for the money. Ask your current loan servicer what kind of loan you have if you’re not sure and then double-check by logging into the Department of Education loan website.

And what if you find that you are not in the income-driven or income-based repayment plan that you are supposed to be in? If you discover, for instance, that you’re in a graduated or extended repayment plan in which your payments are not being credited toward forgiveness?

In that case, your most recent monthly payment, and your payment a year before you apply to have your remaining debt canceled, generally have to have been more than what you would have paid had you been enrolled in a qualifying plan. How do you figure that out with certainty? The Education Department has not explained that yet, but it does already have a repayment calculator that may help you make an estimate.

Finally, that $350 million fund is finite. While it seems like a lot of money, if 7,000 eligible people with an average debt load of $50,000 get in line for it, it will be gone — unless Congress allocates more money or makes a permanent fix. And the line cannot form until the Education Department explains how it will administer the fix-it fund. It is supposed to do so by late May, though federal agencies do miss such deadlines sometimes.

And what if you’re in Mr. Shafer’s shoes, where you’re short of 120 payments when you suddenly figure out that you are not in the right loan or repayment plan, even though you were adamant about your desire to qualify for the forgiveness program? Do what he did. Complain to the ombudsman at the Department of Education, especially if, like him, you dealt with a particularly problematic servicer called ACS several years ago.

Also, contact your representative in the House and your two senators and ask to speak with someone in constituent services. Many of the people in those jobs are young and in debt themselves and have contacts with the Department of Education that can be useful. The Senate staff members I spoke to this week echoed this; louder volume can yield more action or at least inject a greater sense of urgency.

As for Mr. Shafer, he’s just beginning to allow himself to imagine what he will do with the extra money once his loan payments end in 2020. “What would anyone do in their hometown if they had an extra $500 a month?” he said. “They’d buy furniture in local stores, hire local contractors, buy cars in local car lots.”

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He also expressed some trepidation. In the last two weeks, his loan servicer has sent him inaccurate information about his current payment and about his overall number of payments toward forgiveness. That has him imagining himself back on the negative side of the forgiveness equation. “I would like to be an example of what fighting back can do, and I would not like to be an example of what fighting back can do,” he said, chuckling.

Ms. Warren said she was disappointed with the fact that a more permanent or expansive fix for this problem was not politically possible this time around, and vowed to keep watch.

“I certainly intend to keep an eye on Secretary DeVos,” she said, referring to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. “The fight isn’t over until every single nurse, teacher, police officer and firefighter gets the student loan forgiveness that they earned.”

Having trouble with the public service loan forgiveness program? Write to lieber@nytimes.com.

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/your-money/student-public-service-loan-forgiveness-program.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Your Money

Advertisers Drop Laura Ingraham After She Taunts Parkland Survivor David Hogg

March 30, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Mr. Hogg said he has grown accustomed to being criticized, often ruthlessly. But to hear a prominent television host mock his college rejections was “extremely frustrating,” he said.

“I’m not going to stoop to her level and go after her on a personal level,” he said. “I’m going to go after her advertisers.”

Ms. Ingraham’s remarks went too far for TripAdvisor, which said it planned to stop advertising on the show and that it did not “condone the inappropriate comments made by this broadcaster.”

“We also believe Americans can disagree while still being agreeable, and that the free exchange of ideas within a community, in a peaceful manner, is the cornerstone of our democracy,” the company said through a spokesman. “In our view, these statements focused on a high school student cross the line of decency.”

Nutrish, a pet food brand owned by Rachael Ray, said it was “in the process of removing our ads from Laura Ingraham’s program.”

“The comments she has made are not consistent with how we feel people should be treated,” the company said.

Wayfair, an e-commerce company, said in a statement that it supports “open dialogue and debate on issues,” but that it would stop advertising on Ms. Ingraham’s show.

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“The decision of an adult to personally criticize a high school student who has lost his classmates in an unspeakable tragedy is not consistent with our values,” the company said.

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Nestle said it had “no plans to buy ads on the show in the future,” while Stitch Fix, a clothing box subscription service, said it had pulled its advertisements. Johnson Johnson said it had done so as well, while Hulu said on Twitter, “We are no longer advertising on Laura Ingraham’s show and are monitoring all of our ad placements carefully.”

Expedia said it had “recently pulled the advertising” from Ms. Ingraham’s show, but it did not elaborate on timing or whether the decision was related to her comments.

Consumers have increasingly used social media to demand that advertisers respond to a series of controversies, particularly those involving Fox News hosts. Last year, more than 50 brands pulled ads from “The O’Reilly Factor” after The New York Times reported on settlements that the show’s host, Bill O’Reilly, had made with women who accused him of sexual harassment or other inappropriate behavior, which contributed to his ouster.

Similar boycott calls around the host Sean Hannity did not gain as much traction. In November, several brands that initially said they would stop advertising on Mr. Hannity’s show after comments he made about Roy S. Moore, the former Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama, later walked back those statements. Keurig ignited a firestorm when it said that it planned to halt ads on the show, as Mr. Hannity’s fans posted videos of themselves destroying its machines. The company’s chief executive later apologized to employees for any negativity they had faced from the “appearance of ‘taking sides.’”

Mr. Hogg said he was glad that some companies had pulled their ads from Ms. Ingraham’s program, but called it “just the beginning.”

If all of her advertisers pulled out, he said, “we can show that if you continue to bully the students that survived a mass murder, there’s going to be consequences.”

“Deal with the issues, not the individuals,” he said.

In February, Ms. Ingraham drew rebukes from N.B.A. players after she said the basketball superstars LeBron James and Kevin Durant should withhold their political opinions. Mr. James had spoken about his experience as an African-American man and criticized President Trump.

“Must they run their mouths like that?” she asked, adding, “Keep the political commentary to yourself, or as someone once said, shut up and dribble.”

Mr. Hogg plans to study either journalism or political science, he said. He confirmed that he had been rejected from four schools: University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, San Diego; University of California, Santa Barbara; and University of California, Irvine.

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He said he had been accepted by Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo; California State University, San Marcos; and Florida Atlantic University, but has not decided which school he’ll attend.

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/business/media/laura-ingraham-david-hogg.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business

Charlie Walk, Record Executive Accused of Harassment, Is Out at Republic

March 30, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Charlie Walk, the president of the Republic Group, and the company “have mutually agreed to part ways” following an investigation into allegations of harassment. Richard Shotwell/Invision, via Richard Shotwell, via Invision, via Associated Press

Two months after the start of a sexual misconduct investigation into the high-ranking music executive Charlie Walk, the president of the Republic Group, the label and Mr. Walk “have mutually agreed to part ways,” the company said Wednesday night in a brief statement.

Universal Music Group, which oversees the label, declined to comment further on the outcome of the review, which was conducted by an outside law firm. Mr. Walk, who worked with artists including Lorde, the Weeknd and Ariana Grande, and who also appeared as a judge on Fox’s singing competition show “The Four,” did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Accused in January of persistent harassment and inappropriate touching by at least six women who had worked with him, Mr. Walk denied the charges at the time. “I did not do these things and this is not who I am,” he told Rolling Stone last month. “I support the national discussion taking place right now because I believe fully in the importance in treating everyone with respect and dignity at all times.” He retained the lawyer Patricia Glaser, who is also representing Harvey Weinstein, to address the claims.

Mr. Walk had been known as one of music’s most effective promotion executives. He represents perhaps the highest-profile employee in the industry to lose his job amid the #MeToo movement, which has been met by large swaths of silence on the part of both artists and music’s rank-and-file.

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The accusations against Mr. Walk first surfaced on a women’s wellness blog in the form of an open letter. Tristan Coopersmith, who worked under Mr. Walk at Columbia Records, a division of Sony, around 2004, wrote that Mr. Walk had frequently made inappropriate remarks to her and attempted to initiate sexual contact, including pushing her onto a bed in his home.

“For a year I shuddered at the idea of being called into your office, where you would stealthily close the door and make lewd comments about my body and share your fantasies of having sex with me,” Ms. Coopersmith wrote. She said she had been paid a settlement and left the entertainment industry.

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/arts/music/charlie-walk-sexual-harassment-republic-records.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business
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